New Documentary to Tell Story of Dog-Cloning Mormon-Raper

July 18, 2011

Or, "Mormon-raping dog-cloner"? I couldn't decide.

I'm very glad to see that Errol Morris, who has made some great documentaries ("The Thin Blue Line," "The Fog of War"), has now taken on a story that was odd enough for me to write about here. Three times, in fact:

As you may recall, this case involved a woman who was in the news in 2008 when she went to South Korea, under an assumed name, to get her pit bull cloned. (The dog's name was "Booger," although it might have been using an alias too.) Eventually someone realized the woman was Janet McKinney, who had previously been briefly famous in the 1970s when a Mormon missionary in England claimed McKinney had abducted him, handcuffed him to a bed and molested him for three days.

After that, the story got weird.

The weirdness then subsided for three decades until the dog-cloning incident, and seems to have flared up again after the movie was finished. (McKinney cooperated with Morris; the Mormon did not.) According to the New York Times, McKinney has been flying around the country to attend pre-release screenings, at which she tends to yell at the screen during the movie and then identify herself to the audience at the end.

Morris's movie, "Tabloid," opened last Friday. "It's a ridiculous story," Morris said about the movie, "but people are wrong if they think the profound and ridiculous are incompatible." Amen to that, brother.